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In a country where the illiteracy rate of both sexes (15 years and above) is almost 40 per cent, education and the empowerment of the women and youth is an imperative necessity for any concrete development in Yemen.

Let us all work together to demand concrete changes, and demand from the government to bring back the literacy program that it used to implement in the past. We also must make the rights to education and health care as top political priorities in the national dialogue conference (which began on March 2013 and is scheduled to end in August 2013).

Yemen's school aged boys and girls. Photo by Arwa Othman

Activist and chairperson of the Rights and Freedoms Working Group in the National Dialogue, Arwa Othman stressed the importance of education but also added in a post on her Facebook page [ar]:

Not only is the right to education as stated by human rights conventions, but we must also include in the school curriculum in the Republic of Yemen (The New Yemen) these charters .. and they must be taught as a core subject to promote a human rights culture, tolerance, coexistence, peace, freedom, citizenship, equality, non-discrimination, freedom of difference, freedom of religion, etc …) i.e respecting the human being regardless of his/her color, sex, religion, language, political opinion and principles ..etc. We hope to get out of this National Dialogue Conference a constitutional text which respects the right of future generations